Social media website, Reddit, has made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange; and saw its share price boosted by 48% by the close of trading.
In what BBC News is calling “…one of the biggest ever initial public offerings (IPO) by a social media platform”, Reddit had priced its shares at $34 each but they stood at $50.44 by the end of the market’s trading day. This boost sees the company valued now at more than $9bn.
The company put a total of 22 million of its shares up for sale, but some of these were offered to users of its platform – which news sites reports is an unusual move. It reported at the end of last year that it had more than 73 million users for its online forums.
Reddit isn’t profitable but has the potential to make money by allowing companies like OpenAI and Google to scan its archives of conversations to train its AI-language models. However, this has drawn the attention of regulators in the US, where an investigation has been launched, according to Wired. The decision to license data was backed by the company’s investors but has been questioned by the site’s users.
